Men of La Mancha
by adi-rotynd
Summary: Reality fails to live up to either Dave's or Kurt's expectations. For an accidental prompt.


**Spoilers:** Up to 2.06.  
><strong>Warnings:<strong> Bullying, reference to sexual assault (the canon incident), florid excerpts from real romance novels.  
><strong>Disclaimer:<strong> RIB and FOX own everything ever.

(AN: I feel this is important information to have going in: I share pretty much none of the opinions voiced with regards to any given fictional work and its relative enjoyability or merit. Also I know nothing about either romance novels or old movies, so... awkward scrabbling research and raiding another dorm's communal bookshelf ftw.)

Enjoy, and by all means review should it strike your fancy, my best beloveds.~

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><p>If Dave Karofsky were capable of admitting to himself for more than ten minutes at a time that he is gay and wants Kurt Hummel, he would have a much easier time understanding why he is currently stealing one of his mother's "love stories" from the back of her bookshelf. As it is, he doesn't think about whys or wherefores. He concentrates on the important decision of the moment: dusty or non-? A dusty book from the very back won't be missed as soon. But the second layer in, right behind the cookbooks, those are the good ones, right? If she reads them more often, it's because they're better. They have the good shit. Dave wants the good shit. And since Mom doesn't actually admit to owning these, what's she going to do when she figures out it's missing, ask for something she can't say she owned in the first place? Plus, why would Dave ever be a suspect? She'll think it was one of his sisters, he tells himself. It'll be fine.<p>

He goes for the good shit, and runs back to his room with his heart pounding even though there's no one home.

The first one he steals is supposed to be just to make sure. He knows how romance works outside of porn. It's flowers and candy and butterfly kisses. This was just supposed to confirm that, give him fodder for his fantasies of how it would work with Hummel and simultaneously confirm that it's never going to happen – because he's not gay and because Hummel would never have him, not when he's been such a dick to the guy for two years. And anyway, Hummel isn't an option. Dudes are not options.

So the problem is that the book doesn't put much stock in flowers and candy. It's called _Fortune's Fool_and it's about a girl who leaves this nun house where she grew up to live with the dude who paid for this nun-training, but she gets kidnapped halfway there by some cowboy who's a complete ass to her and forces her to marry him. And then they fall in love. Dave thinks it's all completely stupid, and can't figure out why you'd set your story in Brazil if you wanted a blonde heroine, but. But there's this scene. The corner of the page is folded over, so he pays it special attention.

_She was undulating, her body moving with a freedom which would have been applauded by her youthful instructors, abandoned to the magic of the music…_ And Dave can totally get behind the dude's reaction when he walks in on this, because every time he sees Hummel dance – the "Pump It" assembly, "Four Minutes" with the Cheerios, even that spastic "New York" thing – it's seemed like Hummel's doing it on purpose, at him, being that sexy. _"I wasn't doing anything wrong,"_ the lady says, and Kidnapper McStalker is like, _"Oh, yes you were." … Vitor hauled her into his arms. "Didn't those sisters of yours tell you it takes two to samba?"_ So they dance, and the chick's totally into it too, and then, _Suddenly afraid, Ria tried to break his hold. "Please, let me go." She never finished the sentence, the rest of her words lost as he tangled his fingers into her wild mane of hair and discovered the sweetness of her mouth with his own._

And the chick's confused, but then she gets completely into it, goes from being scared to being royally turned on.

The book ends with them having sex, after this really long, boring conversation explaining all the ways they'd misinterpreted each others' feelings and actions. He'd only been mean to her because he wanted her so badly, she'd thought he didn't want her because he was mean. Sex.

This is all confusing and not how he thought romance was supposed to work, but there's one scene that really eats at him. Ria's feeling all insecure and Vitor makes her look in a mirror, asks her what she sees. She says bad things, says she sees someone inexperienced and afraid. Vitor kisses her for like a page and a half, then turns her toward the mirror again. She says she sees the same girl there still, but she's lying and he calls her on it – because what's really there now is someone confident and brave and sexy.

Dave replaces the book the next afternoon and swears never to touch another one, because what reading it did to him in school was just scary. If being a total jerk to someone because you liked them was just a kind of romance, maybe it wouldn't be such a leap to get Hummel alone and kiss him. And maybe it would be just like a fairy tale, or that _scene_, and after one kiss from Hummel everything would be different. Dave would be able to admit what he wants. He'd wake up and be confident and brave. Just like that, like magic.

Thinking shit like that makes it really hard to just shove Hummel into lockers and not dip him backwards all _Gone with the Wind_ and kiss him. Which in turn makes it more necessary to slam him into lockers, because who the fuck wants to do that to a boy, queers want that, and Dave Karofsky is not a queer.

He has a dream where he kidnaps Hummel, who is wearing a white dress, and they have dinner at his house. Dave's parents think Hummel's a girl, and it's pissing Hummel off, so Dave stands up and announces through song that he's a boy. Then they go up to his room, which looks out over a dusty plain full of cacti, and Hummel smacks him. Then he winces and says, "Sorry, it's in the script."

"It's okay," Dave says. "It didn't hurt." They make out, and it's awesome. He picks Hummel up and braces him against the wall and Hummel, who is now wearing those sort of plaid shorts that make Dave think of Catholic school outfits, wraps his legs around Dave's waist and says into a kiss, "I am bewildered by the responses of my body." Dave, who remembers Ria thinking that in the book, says, "Me too. Pretty sure that's normal." Hummel stops kissing him long enough to smile at him with adoration and amazement. "You're so smart," he says. Dave shrugs modestly. Then he wakes up with a raging boner.

The next day he's extra tough on Hummel in school to make up for that faggy dream, which is Hummel's fault. Those plaid shorts would confuse anyone. And that evening he steals another book.

This one is _The Faery Bride_. It doesn't have a picture on the cover, which makes it look boring, but then on the back there's some Robin Hood-looking dude and a girl in a purple nightie, so he goes for it. It has, he discovers, hidden under the covers with a flashlight late that night, another kidnapping. This dude's face is all screwed up so he kidnaps some chick that he thinks is a witch, on the theory that a witch could fix his face, and a hell of a lot of nothing happens for a long time.

Then finally she's doing some weird shit to heal him and tells him to take his shirt off – because that'll help with his face somehow, whatever – and the dude's all hard up because he hasn't gotten laid in years. So then he just grabs her out of the blue and starts macking on her, thinking, _No, woman, you'll not get away, not yet. You think I don't know the fear roiling within you now? … You should have known better than to enter the sanctuary of a beast, should have known better than to tease him, to touch a man starved for the feel of another's flesh. Now you shall pay the consequences…._and he just gets all up on her for a page before he realizes she's into it, which is when he stops.

Dave doesn't end up finishing that one, because Aileen, the chick, says later, _"It would be so much easier for you, if I hated you, wouldn't it, Rhys? It would be easier for me, too."_For some reason that makes him cry a little, like a total girl. He stows the book under his bed and goes to sleep. But he bets they end up together at the end.

The last time he steals a book, it's _The Prize_, and it's about a girl who is, guess what, kidnapped. By a pirate, this time. At least no one randomly mentions Disneyland like they did in _Fortune's Fool_. The pirate intimidates the chick and sleeps in the same bed as her with an arm on her waist, but he doesn't actually grab her like the guys in the other books. Eventually she grabs him, because he's been turning her on since the get-go and she wants to have sex in general. It's actually pretty hot for a few seconds, until Dave gets bored with deciphering the words. This is why porn should be pictures.

He doesn't take any more books. They give him weird dreams about Hummel, and they confuse him. They make him feel better, too, sometimes, but it's not worth it. Definitely not worth it. Just… sometimes. Hummel hates him, he knows that. He thinks Dave is stupid and cruel. And even if things changed, if somehow this whole town changed overnight and Dave stopped hating himself for dreaming about Kurt, even then – Hummel would never have him. Usually, that's his safety net, knowing that he can't try anything because Hummel would be disgusted. And _sometimes_, it's nice to think that maybe he wouldn't. That no matter how much bad stuff you've done, if you did it because you like a person, then maybe it's okay. Maybe they can forgive you.

He stops reading the books. It doesn't make the dreams stop. It really doesn't make the daydreams stop.

He plans it, now. He has a structure, a path to follow. He plots it out over and over again even when he's awake. This is his favorite: The school is deserted for some reason – after hours and no practice, whatever – and he's alone in the hallway. He hears someone singing in the auditorium and he knows who it is, only one person in the school has that pure, soaring voice, can hit that many notes so easily. (He can never make up his mind which song it is; he tends to default to "Push It" and "Toxic" but those need other people and he doesn't want other people. He overheard Kurt singing a song once, "Home," and it was pretty, maybe that.)

He walks in. Hummel stops singing, the way he tends to drop what he's doing when Dave is around, and gives him that _look_, impatient and condescending and nervous. "What do you want, Karofsky?" he asks, on the edge of making a break for it.

Dave walks up onto the stage without answering him. There would be no point. There's nothing he can say. But he takes Kurt's hand and starts singing. And the thing is, Dave's good. He knows he is. So he doesn't feel the need to flaunt it all over school and get his ass kicked like Hudson – he can still _sing_. He could whip off some Sinatra, Hummel's totally the type to go for that.

Hummel tries to tug away at first, but when Dave starts singing, he understands. He loses the hard, brittle expression he wears when he knows Dave is watching. He joins in, and they finish the song together, and it's fucking beautiful. During the song, they're somewhere else, just the two of them, where no one else can see or hear or touch them, and nothing else matters. They get each other.

The song ends and Kurt remembers – this is Dave Karofsky, the guy who checks him into lockers and throws frozen drinks in his face and calls him names. He yanks his hand away. "Don't touch me," he snaps, as proud and brave as when he'd stood up to Dave and Azimio together, but louder because he's covering, because he doesn't mean it.

Dave puts his free hand on Kurt's cheek and leans in slowly, and kisses him.

Kurt kisses him back. He's startled and jerks back for a second, but not far enough to break the kiss. And then he kisses Dave. He threads his fingers through Dave's hair and steps in close. Dave wraps an arm around him and dips him backwards like in an old black-and-white movie.

The best part of this fantasy, and the variations thereon, is that it's sort of realistic. Realistic enough, right? Hummel'd be pissed, sure, he's got reason. But when he realizes that Dave likes him, that it was all just because Dave was trying to protect himself from the intensity of his desire, he might get it. It's possible. And it's not like Dave's been _that_ awful. Hudson was an ass to Hummel too, and Hummel forgave him. Even Puckerman's in glee now. It's not that much of a stretch.

(At least, not compared to his other favorite, where he and Kurt are assigned a project together. They're working on it together in his bedroom and Kurt is suddenly overcome by the depth of his feelings for Dave and yanks him into a knee-weakening kiss. This scenario has a lot to recommend it, but it's never quite as satisfying as the ones that he thinks might actually _work_.)

A song and a kiss. No apologies or explanations, just… understanding. It could go down that way.

Every time Dave does something to Hummel, every time he opens his mouth around Hummel, he makes this less likely. He knows that, somewhere inside. Even deeper, he knows that there's no "less," that it doesn't matter, it's way too late. But every French class, every study hall, sometimes during warm-ups, he retreats to this scene or something like it. Elaborates on it, cuts some parts, tries new angles. And it feels less and less far-fetched. Even after he stops reading the books.

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><p>Kurt Hummel is good at planning things, he is good at being in control, and he has been planning his first kiss since he was nine years old. The details have changed since then, and he's grown more accepting of the idea that, okay, he might have to make some concessions to circumstance, even spontaneity, and to the wishes of his potential boyfriend. <em>Some<em> concessions.

The foundation of the plan came with Disney films: there is going to be a heck of a lot of build-up, and he is going to _earn _this kiss, and so is his boyfriend. They may not have dragons, spells, or sea-witches to conquer, but there's always curfew, sheer teenage awkwardness, and family. Plenty enough obstacles to make for an interesting courtship.

Which is, essentially, the point: he wants to be wooed first, and he wants to put some effort into wooing back. He wants to get to know…

…and this is where he has a problem, because for a year and a half it was Finn Hudson, but now that's completely out. And there aren't many other options. In order for this to be at all plausible, it has to be someone he can conceive of having a crush on. He doesn't need an actual crush for this part, for the planning and fantasizing and telling himself that while he probably isn't going to have a boyfriend before college it doesn't hurt to dream. He just needs someone _plausible_. But he goes to McKinley High, which is small and homophobic and has a bullying problem. He doesn't have a lot of options.

Finn's managed to sour him on his other choice, Sam, and he'd feel a little guilty making out with another one of Quinn's boyfriends in his head, anyway.

He has been forced, of late, to use Carl from World History, who is intelligent and good-looking and once loaned Kurt a pencil. He suspects that he would not, in fact, like Carl very much on closer acquaintance – Mercedes makes this face when she sees him in the hallway – but as long as he doesn't know why, he can pretend.

So: He wants to get to know Carl, and for Carl to get to know him. He wants to _like_ Carl, for him to turn out to be a gentleman and sweet and romantic and _nice_. He makes up quirks and flaws for Carl, to try on for size; he doesn't expect perfection. Nail-biting is unacceptable, but maybe he cracks his knuckles. A fondness for incomprehensible and mind-numbing sports is almost a given; Kurt's used to putting up with that from the men he loves. Actually playing some of these sports is not objectionable, as long as he understands Kurt's need to bring a book to the games, and as long as the sport is not baseball. It would be nice if Carl could tell Audrey and Katherine Hepburn apart and enjoyed a good old-fashioned musical; sometimes Kurt thinks he'll introduce Carl to these things, but on a bad day it's comforting to imagine that he'll already know and love "Make 'Em Laugh." If Carl also likes childish sci-fi junk, like, oh, what was that movie Sam kept talking about – _Avatar_? – then Kurt will make an effort to stay awake for those in return. (_Transformers _would be a deal-breaker, though. He watched one with Finn, Rachel, and Mercedes once. Never again.)

Carl will have to be able to sing. He doesn't have to be great, but a basic ability to sound nice to music is not negotiable. Kurt _will have _his duet if he has to train Carl himself.

So since he was nine he's known approximately what he wants in terms of lead-up to a kiss. To work for it, to make someone else work for it, to get a duet out of the deal. And then he wants it to be magical.

His favorite Disney kiss is still the one in _Sleeping Beauty_. He feels a little guilty about this, because there are a lot of ways in which the ones in _The Little Mermaid_ and _Beauty and the Beast_ are better, and he does like them. But Aurora beats them out for his favorite kiss scene by just a bit. His mother had a book of old fairy tales in the attic, and he's read it through. He knows how the story actually goes, what the king does to the princess and what exactly it is that wakes her up. It gave him nightmares and his dad took the book away until he was fifteen. And he's come to terms, too, with the fact that even leaving aside the actual rape, kissing unconscious people is a morally questionable practice.

But the kiss itself – Prince Philip battles a dragon for it, and it wakes her up. Aurora goes from faded to color and wakes up smiling. He watched that scene over and over again as a kid, watched her go from corpse-colored to living, breathing reality. He wants that – not literally, but still. He wants a kiss that wakes him up. The simplicity of it is seductive. A kiss that perfect, that transformational, so much the culmination of everything they both wanted, everything they'd shared. It's pivotal. It changes everything. The kisses in _The Little Mermaid_ and _Beauty and the Beast_ are beautiful and important, but they're a reward. They're not part of the journey, not the _point_, the way Aurora's is. Aurora – a lot of things about it make him uneasy (and he will smack down anyone who tries to kiss him while he's sleeping, for various reasons), but the visual and narrative power are so compelling that it remains his favorite.

Then there were the old classics, primary among them _How to Steal a Million_. As he grew up enough to understand the sexual aspect of a kiss, he decided that a kiss should, in general, be at least as spectacular as the whirlwind of knee-weakening pleasure with which Peter O'Toole sweeps Audrey Hepburn off her feet. The woman can't even get into a car properly afterward – now _that_ is a kiss. Or _Spellbound_: a kiss so intense it had to be expressed through abstract images. Even the camera angles are part of that one, the close-ups when they meet funneling into the ones when they finally kiss. In short, what he wants is a kiss so amazing that he _stays_ kissed. He wants it to be part of something bigger and he wants it to be something he thinks about, something that stays with him. He wants to feel it after it's over. He wants it to be hard to measure up to, and then to have it surpassed.

Of course, all of this is just the trappings – and basic trappings at that. A nine-year-old isn't terribly inventive when it comes to an actual scenario. That part's evolved quite a bit, with the help of childhood favorites and things he found later. A bedroom is way too much pressure, so Aurora is out. And while Belle was winning for a while, she was eventually consigned regretfully to the 'very unlikely' pile due to the lack of foreseeable balconies and ballrooms in Kurt's future. Ariel, though – now there's potential. It doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to him that maybe he could get a boat out of the deal. Maybe Carl has family with a boat. It doesn't have to be a _ship_. He'd settle for a rowboat, even; Ariel had almost gotten hers in one. Uncle Andy has a lake house and a little motorboat which, while not particularly romantic in and of itself, might lend itself nicely to the cause if they could maneuver around, well, Uncle Andy.

There was also the party scenario, since Belle is hard to get out of his system, and he does sometimes dream of even 'very unlikely' things. Everything in his personal experience tells him that kissing in front of a large number of people could only lead to pain and humiliation, but he can't help thinking that prom might be a good ballroom substitute – if it were somehow a better school by then. It would be so romantic. The only thing as good a lead-up as singing would be dancing. And they could always go somewhere else after for the actual kiss. He wouldn't object to a car. He likes cars. It doesn't sound terribly classy at first, but the more he's thought about it, the more he likes it. He knows cars; he could find a comfortable kissing position. There might be some fumbling, but that's acceptable, and unless Carl has also grown up around cars, Kurt will be in more control of the situation.

The problem with Disney movies is that a kiss tends to be part of a marriage, and that's a bit much – he does want the kiss to come a ways into the relationship, but not _that_ far in. Hand-holding should come first, but not vows.

But there are other movies. In front of a roaring fireplace, a burning building, on the couch while fireworks explode… a lot of fire, actually, in general. The fireplace is his favorite – very classy, but cozy. Comfortable. As clichéd as it is, he wouldn't object to a snowstorm and a nice, thick rug in front of a fire. More realistically, he wouldn't completely discount the possibility of it happening in front of the TV on his couch. That would be entirely comfortable and Kurt would have plenty of control.

None of this to say that he wants to be _in charge_ of the kiss entirely. Given that his previous experience is a list starting with the inside of his elbow and ending with Brittany S. Pierce, with nothing in between, that would likely end badly. He doesn't even really want to instigate it, mostly because that's just too much pressure after a lifetime of being told that wanting to kiss a boy at all is disgusting, never mind actually trying it. And he doesn't want to control his boyfriend (well, not entirely). He just wants to be in control of the general situation, of himself. He wants to know it's coming, to have time to appreciate it – in much the same way that it should stay with him after, he should have time to savor it beforehand. Anticipation and all that. And, while it's probably silly of him after decades without a chance to say "yes," he does want the option of saying "no." There were the Sleeping Beauty nightmares, and before that there were a few Barbara Stanwyck movies until his mom realized that they were freaking him out. He just doesn't think much of being manhandled until passion takes over; a slow burn, one where each of them care what the other one wants and what they actually _decide_, seems sexier. He gets plenty of feeling unsafe and on edge every day; when it comes to romance, he'd very much like to feel comfortable.

And be swept off his feet by the romance and perfection of the kiss, of course. That too.

He hasn't really watched a Disney movie in years (aside from _The Princess and the Frog_ with Mercedes for nostalgic value) but the ideas are there. And he still watches plenty of classic films. Unfortunately, his prospects have pretty much never been so dim. At least for most of his high school career he could set his sights on Finn. Now all he has is Carl, and he doesn't even have a crush on Carl. He can watch as many movies and lay as many plans as he'd like; he knows where they're getting him and it's nowhere. The entire scenario has always been impossible, but now it feels impossible, which is worse.

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><p><em>"You are nothing but a scared little boy who can't handle how extraordinarily ordinary you are!"<em>

This isn't what either of them wanted.

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><p>It hadn't worked. Dave had thought, in the brief instant in which he'd thought at all, that this might be the last, best chance he'd have, that maybe Hummel would understand – so they weren't in the auditorium and there was no singing and Hummel wasn't just condescending, he was furious. Still, he'd thought – still – maybe – and for a second he hadn't cared that he was kissing a boy, he'd just been kissing <em>Kurt<em>, and he could have cried for relief alone.

It was after Hummel pushed him away that he really noticed his face.

There was no magic, no transformation, no understanding. He had accomplished exactly this: He'd made Hummel really, openly, not-covering-it afraid of him. The kiss hadn't opened anyone's heart. It had hurt the guy, worse than if he'd gone ahead and hit him.

And Dave had kissed a boy.

_Fine_, he thinks later. _Fine._ Good. Hummel should be afraid of him. Disgusted by the whole thing. Never happened. It's fine. Edge up on keeping the fag in line, good. As if he cares. As if it matters.

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><p>The most coherent thought Kurt can form for a quarter of an hour afterward is a hysterical giggle, or the mental equivalent thereof.<p>

By the time he calls Blaine, he's collected himself enough that he's started to feel genuinely sorry for Karofsky. The boy plainly has more issues than Kurt can even dream of, is so far in the closet he's groping blind. He's so repressed he's just accidentally outed himself to someone he hates, someone who hates him. And as much as it was just bad luck that put Kurt there when he gave in to his suppressed urges, Kurt feels a bit responsible for him, as he is probably the only person in the world who knows that Karofsky's gay.

But with two and change's years of bullying, he's never hated Karofsky this much. Which is where the hysterical giggling comes in; it's uncanny, and if he could give Karofsky any kind of credit for having done it on purpose he'd go after the boy with a shotgun, because it's as if the bully went down a checklist of everything Kurt wanted his first kiss to be and found a way to destroy the entire concept.

He could have settled for less than his ideal. Life isn't a black and white movie, or even an animated one; his first kiss was never going to be one either. It would have been nice, though, if it hadn't been bad scene from a cheap romance novel gone horrifically wrong, either.

Well, fine. Good. He can be the bigger man here. He'll do his best to help (but not ever, ever be alone with Karofsky again). The whole thing was probably hopelessly unrealistic to begin with. He'll get over it. It doesn't matter that much.


End file.
